A woman is suing the head of Japan’s biggest yakuza organized crime group over protection money she paid to gangsters.

She claims the don-equivalent of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Kenichi Shinoda, bears “employer’s liability” for the gangsters who threatened to burn down her bar if she did not pay up.

The woman, who has not been named, is demanding Shinoda hands over 17m yen (£112,000) after mobsters forced her to pay between 30,000 and 100,000 yen a month between 1998 and 2010.

She says Shinoda bears ultimate responsibility for her losses because the gangsters, members of the Inabaji Ikka, a local yakuza group connected to Yamaguchi-gumi, were affiliated to his nationwide umbrella crime syndicate.

On one occasion in 2008 when she tried to refuse to pay, she was warned that her bar in the central city of Nagoya could be burned down.